America’s New Migration Story

For more than a century, the United States has projected itself as the world’s premier destination: a magnet for ambition, talent and reinvention. Yet 2025 marked a symbolic break with that narrative. For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. appears to have experienced net negative migration—more people leaving than arriving—according to estimates highlighted by The Wall Street Journal and economists at Brookings.

The shift is not simply a political talking point. It reflects a deeper rebalancing in the global marketplace for people—particularly skilled workers, young families and mobile professionals—as remote work becomes entrenched, living costs climb, and the perceived “quality-of-life premium” of the U.S. erodes.

A historic reversal — measured indirectly

Washington does not maintain a single, comprehensive measure of emigration. Instead, the emerging picture comes from a patchwork of indicators: residence permits issued to Americans abroad, foreign property purchases, international enrolments, and destination-country migration records.

Brookings has argued that 2025 likely produced the first negative net migration reading in decades, driven by a sharp fall in entries alongside increased enforcement activity and voluntary departures. The politics around these numbers are predictable; the underlying forces are more structural. Remote work has reduced the penalty of distance. A U.S. salary can now be earned in a lower-cost, higher-amenity setting—often with better access to healthcare and public infrastructure. That arbitrage is powering a new kind of American diaspora.

The scale: millions abroad — and counting

How many Americans live outside the U.S.? Estimates vary widely, partly because many people do not register with consulates, and because categories blur—dual citizens, long-term students, children born abroad to U.S. parents, and frequent “tourist-stayers” who manage their presence through repeated exits and re-entries.

Still, the headline is clear: millions of U.S. citizens now live overseas, and the number is rising. The most visible communities are no longer limited to classic expatriate hubs. Today’s American enclaves include Lisbon and Dublin, parts of Bali, and growing nodes across Colombia and Thailand—places where lifestyle, safety, climate and cost converge.

Europe’s pull is strengthening — and the country-by-country momentum is hard to ignore

One reason the shift feels newly consequential is that it is increasingly visible in destination data. While official statistics differ by country and lag in time, proprietary mobility signals point to a sustained acceleration—especially across Europe.

Proprietary mobility and compliance data from Flamingo Compliance—an app used by globally mobile professionals to track travel days, residence-permit requirements and real-time tax-residency exposure—suggests that the American move to Europe is not a one-off spike, but a sustained acceleration.

Across almost all EU countries, Flamingo Compliance has recorded record growth for three consecutive years in the number of U.S. passport holders arriving to live and work. The most pronounced shift is visible in Portugal, where the number of Americans relocating has increased more than fivefold since the start of the Covid-era period. Importantly, the pace is still quickening: Flamingo Compliance data indicates that arrivals in 2024 were up 36% versus the previous year, and 2025 rose a further 51% compared with 2024.

Other European destinations show the same momentum, though from different baselines. In both Spain and the Netherlands, the number of Americans captured in the dataset roughly doubled between 2023 and the end of 2025. In the Czech Republic, the increase over the same period was more than a doubling, underscoring that the trend is expanding beyond the usual “sun-and-sea” narrative and into Central Europe as well.

Editorial note: these are app-derived indicators based on users and usage patterns, not official government migration counts—yet they are useful as a near-real-time signal of relocation intent and behaviour.

Taken together, the pattern suggests a broad-based re-evaluation by American professionals of where “a good life” can be built—especially when employment, income and clients remain largely U.S.-linked, but day-to-day living costs and public services follow a European model.

The demand signal: a striking gender gap in “exit intent”

Hard migration numbers lag. Attitudes often move first—and one of the strongest indicators of rising emigration interest comes from Gallup.

A Gallup survey published in late 2025 found that 40% of American women aged 15–44 said they would like to leave the U.S. permanently if they could—one of the most striking results in Gallup’s recent tracking and notably higher than reported levels in most world regions.

That figure matters because it captures something beyond a political moment: it signals that for a large share of younger women, the U.S. is no longer viewed as the default best place to build a future.

Beyond politics: the everyday economics of leaving

It is tempting to explain the trend as purely political—especially given how often “moving abroad” appears in partisan discourse. But many of the drivers predate any single administration and look far more like a modern cost-benefit calculation.

In a Flamingo Compliance in-app survey of 11,800 Americans who had already left the U.S., the most cited motivations were the expansion of remote work, rising cost of living, and disillusionment with an always-on, hyper-competitive work culture. Notably, 19% reportedly referenced a desire to avoid schooling environments where gun violence feels like a non-zero risk.

Even without treating any single datapoint as definitive, the direction of travel is consistent across sources: quality-of-life factors are increasingly treated as rational economic variables—not abstract preferences.

Education, retirement, and a new relocation industry

The emigration story is not confined to one class or age bracket.

Students are enrolling abroad partly because degrees can be cheaper than U.S. tuition, and because global credentials now translate more smoothly across borders. Retirees are also participating, particularly those seeking lower-cost healthcare and elder care in nearby countries such as Mexico. Where demand goes, an industry follows. Relocation firms, immigration advisers, tax specialists, and “settling-in” services have proliferated—and the customer profile has broadened. What was once the domain of highly credentialed internationalists is now increasingly the ordinary middle class, looking for a more manageable life.

Countries are competing for Americans — sometimes explicitly

Some governments now design pathways that implicitly target U.S. citizens and other high-income remote workers. In parts of Europe and the Balkans, residence options for remote workers are marketed not simply as visas, but as lifestyle products: legal clarity, lower living costs, and access to services that feel more predictable than what many Americans experience at home.

The logic is straightforward: mobile professionals bring spending power, entrepreneurial activity and—depending on local tax rules—economic upside for the host country.

A pressure point: housing and local backlash

Large-scale inflows into specific neighbourhoods can trigger local strain. Where American (and broader international) demand concentrates, rents rise, property markets tighten and political friction follows. In some cities, the backlash has fused with broader protests over overtourism and housing affordability, turning “expat demand” into a local political issue.

This raises an uncomfortable question for destination countries: how to capture the economic upside of incoming residents without importing inequality and pricing locals out of their own cities.

What 2025 really means

Net negative migration does not mean “America is emptying out.” The U.S. remains enormous, wealthy and highly attractive to millions. But 2025 may be remembered as the year the country’s migration identity became more complex: not only a place people move to, but a place people increasingly choose to leave—for reasons that are economic, cultural and personal.

In an era where high-income labour can be delivered from anywhere, the competition is no longer just between companies. It is between countries—competing on safety, healthcare, education, affordability and social trust.

America helped build that globalised world. Now it is learning what it feels like to be part of the market it created.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal; Brookings; Gallup; Flamingo Compliance (proprietary app data); U.S. State Department and destination-country indicators as referenced in reporting.